United Nations
June 8, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump has made some outstanding appointments (although one of the best, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, recently offered to resign in the face of criticism from the president). Right now, my favorite Trump appointee is U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. In the tradition of our best U.N. ambassadors — Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick — Haley has been a powerful voice against U.N. hypocrisy. Most notably, she has denounced U.N.
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June 1, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Word is that President Trump will announce his decision on whether the U.S. will remain in the Paris Climate Accord at 3 pm eastern time today. It is rumored that he will withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Accord, probably by invoking its own clause allowing for withdrawal on a four-year timeline, but that the U.S. will remain a full participant in the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, which
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April 26, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Dana Milbank reports, with glee, that the United Nations “has contacted the Trump administration as part of an investigation into whether repealing [Obamacare] without an adequate substitute for the millions who would lose health coverage would be a violation of several international conventions that bind the United States.” The warning comes from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva. The U.N. Human Rights Commission (now
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March 28, 2017 — Scott Johnson
AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference opened Sunday in Washington, D.C. and concludes today. The conference home page is here. AIPAC has posted videos here. The posted videos include speeches by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Vice President Pence, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, House Speaker Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy as well as leading Democrats. AIPAC promotes American support of Israel on a bipartisan basis. Yesterday
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March 25, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The news obviously wasn’t good for conservatives this week on the Obamacare front. On the spy vs. spy front, the news was mixed and confusing. However, there was plenty for conservatives to be happy about. First and foremost, Neil Gorsuch was terrific at his Senate hearing, and the Democrats seem determined to maximize the damage his confirmation will inflict on them. In addition, President Trump’s approval of construction of the
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February 21, 2017 — John Hinderaker
President Trump has made so many excellent appointments that it is hard to keep up with them all. But surely one of the best is his appointment of Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina, as UN Ambassador. The video below dates from last Thursday, when Haley addressed the press after attending her first Security Council meeting on the Middle East. It is only about four minutes long, so rather
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January 3, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Ilan Ben Zion reports at the Times of Israel: Islamic authorities managing the Temple Mount attempted to have a veteran Israeli archaeologist ejected from the Jerusalem flashpoint holy site on Sunday for using the term “Temple Mount” in a lecture to American students. Waqf guards brought him to Israeli police at the site to complain, and the police, while saying there were no legal grounds to eject him, advised him
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January 2, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The Obama administration denied that it coordinated the introduction and passage of the infamous United Nations Security Council resolution that allocated to the Palestinian Arabs all the land taken by Israel in its defense in 1967, including the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. The Obama administration goes so far as to concede that it its abstention allowed the passage of the resolution. It hasn’t explained why it abstained rather than voted
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January 1, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Associated Press reports on incoming U.N. head Antonio Guterres, and takes the opportunity to editorialize on Donald Trump. As is so often true these days, some of what the AP reports as fact is flat-out wrong: Antonio Guterres takes the reins of the United Nations on New Year’s Day, promising to be a “bridge-builder” but facing an antagonistic incoming U.S. administration led by Donald Trump who thinks the world
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December 30, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
British Prime Minister Theresa May has criticized John Kerry’s oration on the state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kerry called Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition “the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by its most extreme elements.” And, of course, he condemned Israeli settlement building as a threat to the “two-state solution.” May responded that her government “[does] not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the
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December 29, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Michael Ramirez (@Ramireztoons) carefully observed John Kerry’s rant against our friend and ally Israel at the State Department yesterday. President Obama’s public relations minions are on their prevarication tour to defend the betrayal of Israel by the United States in the United Nations. Kerry’s rant at State was a key stop on the tour. In his cartoon on Kerry’s rant Ramirez homes in on the Obama doctrine as applied in
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December 28, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at what seemed like Castroite length in defense of the infamous UN Security Council resolution that passed with the abstention of the United States this past Friday. The text of Kerry’s speech is posted here. Elliott Abrams capably parses it here. Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to Kerry’s speech in Hebrew (accessible in the video posted here) and in English. The brief excerpts of Netanyahu’s
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December 28, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
The Jerusalem city planning committee was scheduled today to vote to permit the building of 618 new housing units in East Jerusalem, an area populated mostly by Palestinians. However, with John (“Foghorn”) Kerry about to deliver an oration about his vision of “peace” in the Middle East, the planning committee postponed the vote. Members of the committee said it delayed the vote at the request of Prime Minister Netanyahu. According
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December 28, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Michael Oren is the former Israeli ambassador to the United States during the first term of the Obama administration. We interviewed Oren about the memoir of his tenure as ambassador Ally: My Journey Across the American Israeli Divide in the Power Line podcast posted here. It is a highly illuminating memoir. Oren currently serves as Israel’s Deputy Minister for Diplomacy. He is first and foremost a prominent historian, certainly the
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December 27, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Critics of President Obama’s decision not to block (and, perhaps, to advance) the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel say that it was solely an attempt to harm Israel — an effort motivated by vindictiveness and/or raw ideological dislike of Israel. Those who disagree with this assessment should be able to point to a positive objective Obama reasonably could think his decision might advance. In theory, I can think of
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December 27, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Reader Martin Karo is a Philadelphia attorney. Mr. Karo has submitted a modest if lawyerly proposal for the consideration of President-elect Donald Trump and the 115th Congress. He writes: After the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, declaring that all Israeli building and activity in any territory captured in the 1967 war (the third war imposed on the Israelis) is illegal under international law, Donald Trump immediately vowed that
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December 26, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Charles Hill is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy, Senior Lecturer in International Studies, and Senior Lecturer in Humanities at Yale, where he is one of the principal teachers and presiding spirits in the Directed Studies program for freshmen as well as the year-long course on Grand Strategy for university students. Before undertaking his career as a teacher, Professor Hill
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